£6 million Edmund Rice centre to open

A €6 million Waterford visitors centre is to open next week with the aim of becoming "one of the country's premier ecclesiastical and heritage tourism sites".

The new centre, dedicated to the founder of the Christian and Presentation Brothers, Edmund Ignatius Rice, is set to open on the historic Mount Sion site on Barrack Street in Waterford next Friday.

Located at the same site as the Mount Sion primary and secondary schools, the centre is seeking to draw both Irish and overseas visitors.

It is the first major refurbishment of the site since the beatification of Edmund Rice by Pope John Paul II in 1996.

Announcing details of the centre yesterday, Christian Brothers communications director Br Edmund Garvey said: "This [ centre] belongs to Waterford; this symbolises to the people of Waterford how much Edmund belonged here.

"Whatever was in the spirit and vision of the man spread and kept on spreading. This Edmund Rice spirit is growing in different ways."

The centre was opened to journalists yesterday, a week ahead of a scheduled ribbon-cutting ceremony to be performed by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

It will place visitors in 18th-century Waterford through the use of screens, sounds and a smell generator. A 19th-century school-room and an exact replica of Rice's room, where he spent the final seven weeks of his life, will allow visitors to see personal items associated with him.

An unusual feature of the centre is a "newsroom", akin to a TV broadcast newsroom, with a backdrop of pink and blue fluorescent tubes along with a centrepiece of a clock surrounded by screens.

The aim of the newsroom is to give information and updates regarding the Brothers' works around the world.

Born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1762, Edmund Rice attended a commercial school before arriving in Waterford city to become an apprentice to his uncle, Michael Rice, the owner of an extensive provisions supply business.

In his early 20s, Edmund Rice married Mary Elliott (24) but was widowed three years later and left to care for their infant daughter, who is understood to have been born with a disability.

Subsequently, Rice became successful in business before dedicating his life to religious and charitable works, establishing a school on New Street for poor boys in 1802. The school was eventually relocated to the Mount Sion site on Barrack Street.

The remains of Edmund Rice, which had been in a casket at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at Mount Sion for more than 25 years, are now placed in the new Edmund Rice Chapel on the site.